Resin To Riches: Weekly Plastic Market Insights

Polymer Global Analysis

Resin To Riches: Weekly Plastic Market Insights

• General Thoughts: Regulation is poised to reallocate packaging profit pools toward design-led ecosystems, rewarding early specification control and lifting risk for volume-driven players that delay sustainable capital allocation decisions.  
• Polyethylene (PE): Global PE spot prices firm on cost curve steepening and trade leverage, yet inventory overhangs and mixed end-demand signals imply durability depends on structural supply rationalization to keep oversupply in check.
• Polypropylene (PP): Global PP price strength reflects propylene escalation and integration advantage, but compressed PP-to-PGP spreads signal margin dispersion, elevating feedstock flexibility as one of 2026’s defining differentiators.
• Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC): Global PVC spot prices rally on tightening trade flows and rising cost floors, yet inventory builds and downstream pipe margin compression warn that restocking must convert into building and infrastructure demand.
• Other Sector Developments: Crude oil and naphtha price strength versus US natural gas widens global cost dispersion, reinforcing Middle East and North American advantages while challenging naphtha-exposed Asia and Europe producers

Exhibit 1 – Chart of the Day: Regulation accelerates value chain integration and sustainable packaging redesign.       

Source: Sonoco – 2026 Investor Day, February 2026